New OD&D campaign beginning

[Deleted]

As some of you know I have been running an OD&D campaign for the last 4 years with a wide variety of player ages, background and experience. We are near to bringing that campaign to a stopping point and beginning in January I am starting a new campaign.

I will be sharing things about that campaign from time to time. Fin please let me know where that (i.e. this) thread belongs and please move it there.

Since one of my players is a member here, I will not be posting things that the players do not yet know, and I will leave it up to him whether or not he wants to ID himself as one of my players. However, Anything I post here the member/player is free to share with the rest of the group.

I have sent them the following info as a starting place and invited them to provide feedback and feedback is also welcome from all of you. Everything is subject to tweaking up until the campaign starts.

You all awaken to find that you have been (you assume) robbed, beaten, arrested, dressed in rags and chained up in a large dungeon cell. You awaken with no memories of who you are or what happened, you do not know if you do or should know each other or not. You have no possessions, except for your rags and you are very hungry and thirsty. You have no knowledge of what abilities or talents you may have or possess. Until you learn otherwise, assume that you are all fighting men/women. You will learn once you see your captors that survival very likely will depend on a speedy escape...

I will be sending out more little snippets to them between now and the beginning of the campaign and I will try to update this thread with those bits as we go. We have usually had about 6-8 players for most of the games and I am hoping that can grow a bit to 7-10 players per game. I am going to try to do something unique and hopefully fun with the classes and in the process twist OD&D and see if it breaks or not.

I am planning on having no elves, dwarves, hobbits or halflings as player characters (yes, gentle readers hobbits and halflings are two completely different creatures), only as non-player characters. The players will not know until they get their character sheets and until they look around the dungeon cell whether or not their character is human or something else. I am designing some new player character races and the campaign will not necessarily be humancentric. Magic will be Different and Magic-Users/Clerics, well wait and see. Hopefully it will be fun.

I am using ideas from everywhere. If it has been published in any one of a few hundred rpg products or has been posted by anyone on here or Dragonsfoot or Enworld or any forum in the Ye Olde lists or any one of a few thousand websites or blogs, a movie, a book of any genre or a nightmare it could show up here, or not.

Stay tuned!

[archersix]

Sounds neat. Looking forward to updates.

[havard]

Will Blackmoor be involved? B)

-Havard

[Deleted]

Nov 27, 2013 11:39:50 GMT -6 havard said:

Will Blackmoor be involved? B)

-Havard

Not directly as the setting, but I am trying to take inspiration from Blackmoor. Advice and suggestions are more than welcome, that is part of what this thread is for and I would like your input and that of others. I am going to be posting a few more ideas soon but the bulk of it will not start to come out until the 1st game is played. Right now I am kicking ideas around and nothing posted is "canon" for the new campaign yet. I plan to write up the finalized intro/starting point for the players close to the start of the game and a "finalized" set of house rules. Between now and then it is mostly up for grabs.

[Finarvyn]

A very cool start. While I understand not being able to post spoilers here, it's a shame that we don't get to read about them. Maybe once the campaign is farther along you can give us info about the early parts.

[Deleted]

Fin,
I will be posting some more possibilities soon. After the first game in January, I will be posting a lot of the basic premises of the campaign. This initial time period is looking for suggestions. I only have one player on here so far, but I am encouraging others to join. I have asked the whole group for suggestions, but not many have been forth coming. - I think that is the right smiley!

[Deleted]

One of my players in the current campaign sometimes splits the party, not in every game session, but now and then. In the most recent game, he did it not once but twice, both times going off by himself. When he started off the second time I asked him why are you doing that, when you know it usually ends badly. He replied, “Yes, but such interesting things happen when I do!”

I'm not sure how I should feel about that.

[Deleted]

Once you (each of you) are fully awake, groggy, with splitting a headache, but awake, you look around at the others chained alongside you and realize that you don’t recognize anyone and you do not even know what these creatures are. Looking down at yourself you realize you are not sure what you are for that matter. A door opens and some guards walk into the space in front of your cell. Large muscular looking creatures with a harness holding their weapons and insignia over a fur covered body, both feet and hands are clawed. You take note that the claws are look very sharp as do the fangs that show when they "smile". They point at you and seem to be insulting you, but you can not understand their language. This goes on for a while, then something from outside the cell that sounds like a command, results in all of them leaving. The minimal light in the cell dwindles to nothing. You are very, very hungry, but your thirst is impossible to ignore, your lips are dry and cracked. You realize that those guards are not going to be bringing you anything and that no matter how you ended up here, you seem to have no value to your captors/jailors.

[Deleted]

I had to postpone the game a week, but it is scheduled for this weekend - Saturday January 25th. Right now I am expecting to have seven (7) players, including my wife. {{As a side note my wife had never played at all; however, when one of my experienced players (who BTW runs his own campaign and is also starting something brand new in February) (who is a member on here) started bringing his wife to my game, I was able to talk my wife into giving it a try.}}

Once this first game session is completed, I will be posting all of the campaign details that the PCs have discovered.

[Deleted]

OK, the game took place Saturday evening and the weather only took out two players, but I still had five present. You have read the starting scenario above, so now some of the background that lead to that situation.

This is the world of Meraelynyan and it is populated by a number of sentient races; here are a few of them:

The most aggressive of the lot are the Hudgewolves who once viewed everyone else as food and in “rare” cases have been known to violate treaties and their newer laws that were born out of a series of Wars between the Hudgewolves and many, but not all, of the other races. The average male Hudgewolf stands about 6’4” and weighs in around 240 lbs. The Hudgewolves share many traits with wolves and other predators being very territorial and braver in packs. They are gray of fur, with rare variations. Hudgewolves are not fond of the water and are known for being poor swimmers. These creatures are one of the most tradition bound and only the fiercest can rise to leadership and the Great Leaders will is law among them. Hudgewolves are one of the races that possess magic although it is quite rare among them with only one in a thousand bearing the Gift. The current Great Leader is searching all of them out and putting them to use to conquer their neighbors, striking without warning and gaining the upper hand in the early going. They have been kidnapping as many as possible trying to discern those with the potential for magic, but as they found they could not recognize the trait in others they have been letting them starve to death and have turned to killing instead of capturing.

The Zaqoyan are the largest of the lot being much like sentient bears and most commonly of light red-brown fur. They are very strong and usually of mild temperament, but they fight with great ferocity when they are roused to war. When their trust is abused, their drive for vengeance is legendary. Of all the furred races, they alone of the furry races are nearly bereft of magic, with only one in ten thousand bearing the Gift. The average male Zaqoyan stands about 7’6” and weighs in around 380 lbs. They love the water and are powerful swimmers.

The Nagaretan are just marginally shorter than the Hudgewolves and are much like sentient badgers. They can be touchy and easily offended, but they are also pragmatic and were instrumental in binding the Hudgewolves to treaty and law at the end of the Wars. The average male Nagaretan stands about 6’ 2” and weighs in around 250 lbs. They are not fond of water either and are known for the rich dark brown color of their fur. Among the Nagaretan about one in a thousand bears the Gift.

The Zavaletan are the smallest of the furred races and are of wiry musculature and known for being very quick. The are much like sentient foxes. They are usually of light yellowish fur and the average male stands around 5’4” and weighs around 135 lbs. They have the most antipathy for the Hudgewolves and the feeling is mutual. The Zavaletan are good swimmers and about one in two hundred and fifty bear the Gift the most of any race.

The reptilian race of the Savean are covered with sand-colored scales and are great swimmers and contrary to looks some are also great climbers. They can go up sheer walls like they are stuck to them. While being a single race their abilities vary depending on where they are hatched, those hatched in the swamps having one set of skills, likewise those hatched in deserts and those hatched among the cliffs and other places all have their own special skill set. The average male stands about 6’6” and weighs about 260 lbs. Only about one Savean in fifty thousand possess the Gift, but in those that do it is especially strong.

The insectoid race of the Siddiq have a hard gray shell, an exoskeleton, and stand about 5’8” tall and appear to weigh about 150 lbs but are actually quite a bit lighter. They do not swim but instead “skitter” about on top of the water, and they also can climb a wall no matter how sheer or slick and can hang upside down on the underside of a surface for hours. The Siddiq are naturally armed with a retractable razor sharp blade that extends through the palm of their “hands”. Similar to the Zaqoyan, about one in ten thousand bears the Gift.

The Hudgewolves very rarely speak any language but their own, for they feel it is beneath them to do so. The Zaqoyan, Nagaretan, and the Zavaletan over a long period of strong alliance have come to speak dialects of the same combined language and can roughly understand each other and some older ones speak additional languages. The Savean only speak their own language as a rule and do the Siddiq. The only major exception to this is traders and diplomats.

All of the sentient races see in low level light extremely well and can operate in daylight or nocturnally with nearly equal ease, though they prefer daylight. There are many races besides these, though only some are aware of it.

Magic known as The Gift, is an innate ability that you are born with and can not be developed later, it is an individual Genetic Trait. The Gift comes in two flavors, Intelligence based and Wisdom based. First you have to meet a minimum level of Intelligence or Wisdom and then be found to have the trait for The Gift. The Elders among the Hudgewolves, Savean and Siddiq can identify The Gift in their young, but among the Zaqoyan, Nagaretan, and the Zavaletan, The Gift is only identified when it first manifests itself which could be as early a five years old or as late as extreme old age and some with The Gift never manifest. Alone of all the sentient races the Savean can develop The Gift on its own, but all the rest must find a teacher to develop and grow in The Gift.

Extremely rare is the one who possesses both versions of The Gift, usually only occurring once in many generations. When such a one appears they are held in great honor by all, but at the same time held to an extremely high standard by all. Legend tells of The Great Ones of Old and Legend also tells of two Great Evil Ones of Old who sought to use their Gift for evil and of the great battles that brought their downfall.


More to follow later!

[Deleted]

During the game the player characters memories slowly returned and are about 20% complete at this time, although they as yet have no inkling of what caused their memory loss. The Zaqoyan, the Savean and the Siddiq had never seen any of the others before. The two Nagaretan knew each other and the two Zavaletan knew each other, but neither pair knew the other, nor did they know any of the three. None of them had ever been close to a Hudgewolf before and all of them had lost family and friends.

One of the group cast a spontaneous in a moment of stress Silence spell, one cast a spontaneous in a moment of stress Healing spell and one cast a spontaneous in a moment of stress Fire spell. For all three it was the first manifestation of The Gift.

Over a distance the Siddiq is the fastest of the group and the Zaqoyan is the slowest, although the charge of a Zaqoyan can take nearly any creature by surprise.

I have a little more to post before the next game, but the group has much to learn about themselves and about their peoples.

I will try to post a game summary in the next few days.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Deleted]

I have been reading the thread titled - Definition of "Sandbox" - and so I am going to work up some comments relative to this new campaign and how it relates to the "Sandbox" - look for it in the next couple of days.